Guitar Hero video game uses 3/4-size guitar as input device

Guitar Hero is a game for the PS2 that lets you play the part of a stardom-bound rock guitarist. You have to kick out power chords and strum along to the prompts to move to the next level, where I guess you get better drugs and hotter groupies. IGN gives Guitar Hero for PS2 a positive review.

The best part about the guitar is that it incorporates most of the real life techniques and motions that a guitarist would perform on a real instrument. Hammer-ons, pull-offs and up-down strumming all work with this device, making the transition from the real thing to the Guitar Hero SG as minor as moving from strings to buttons. Had the guitar not allowed for conventional techniques that are second-nature in a guitarist's repertoire, it would have been crippling. Smartly, Red Octane has designed the peripheral to not only utilize these techniques in the songs, but to embrace real guitar playing styles and techniques as well. Kudos for that.

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Reader comment: Rupert says: "In the context of virtual geetar performance games, it would be a shame not to remember "Quest For Fame". It scores very highly: it featured a virtual pick that plugged into the parallel port of your PC, it had animated sequences of mutant bikers who would beat you up if you failed to strum along to Born To Be Wild to their satisfaction, it suggested you used a tennis racquet for that perfect bedroom rawkstar experience, it worked with 'DOS 6.2 and up' and it was from IBM. Yes, IBM.

"I was suffering from advanced videogame burnout when that came along, and it managed to blow the embers into one last month-long nightly bonfire session. Dunno about this new Guitar Hero business - all that hassle and you don't get to learn how to play the real thing? Rather be sitting on the duvet with a $100 Chinese copy Flying-V."